Familial Moralities: Moral (Re)source of Commitment in the Immigrant Rights Movement in El Paso, Texas

2021 ◽  
Vol 45 (2) ◽  
pp. 225-246
Author(s):  
Alejandro Márquez
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
Asylum Seekers ◽  
El Paso ◽  
Immigrant Family ◽  
Immigrant Rights ◽  
Everyday Activities ◽  
Care Givers ◽  
Strenuous Work ◽  
Immigrant Rights Movement

Social movement scholars acknowledge the importance of morality in joining and shaping social movements. There is less knowledge about the content of morality that keeps social movement participants committed, once in. Moral commitments, I argue, emerge from the work conducted within social movements. By looking at everyday activities in the immigrant rights movement in El Paso, Texas, I analyze how commitment is shaped through the caregiving practices of staff and volunteers within two organizations serving immigrants and asylum seekers on the border: Compromiso and Casa Asuncion. Despite the strenuous work involved, I find care givers in these two organizations make sense of their continued participation by drawing on what I call familial moralities. At Compromiso, a legal aid office, caregivers reflect on their or others’ immigrant family histories, creating an intellectual attachment to the work through family. At Casa Asuncion, a migrant shelter, caregivers draw on new familial roles with migrants and the shelter staff, creating an emotional attachment as family.

Detached Attachment: Burnout and Commitment among Caregivers in the Immigrant Rights Movement

2020 ◽  
pp. 089692052096637
Author(s):  
Alejandro Márquez
Keyword(s):  
Nonprofit Organizations ◽  
Asylum Seekers ◽  
Negative Experience ◽  
Immigrant Rights ◽  
Care Recipients ◽  
Everyday Practices ◽  
Mexico Border ◽  
Immigrant Rights Movement ◽  
The Government ◽  
Movement Participation

The increasing numbers of migrants and asylum seekers reaching the U.S.–Mexico border since 2014 has strained local nonprofit organizations helping them. Lack of material and human resources along with uncertain policy implementation by the government generates frustration and burnout among caregivers working in local nonprofits. Nonetheless, turnover as a result of burnout is surprisingly low. To answer why so few caregivers make efforts to help migrants and asylum seekers on the border, I analyze how caregivers respond to burnout in this resource-scarce context. I find that caregivers practice what I call detached attachment, the process of physically and emotionally distancing oneself from care work, while maintaining a cognitive attachment to it. Caregivers seek space to process their negative emotions and manage their relationships with care recipients to reduce intensity, while also reflecting on their normative attachments to the work. Paradoxically, then, the negative experience of burnout ends up renewing caregivers’ commitment to the immigrant rights movement. This article highlights the significance of everyday practices of care in sustaining social movement participation.

scholarly journals Dynamics of Distinction and Solidarity within Social Movements: Explaining Relations between Privileged and Underprivileged Groups in the U.S. Immigrant Rights Movement

2021 ◽  
pp. 073112142199006
Author(s):  
Walter Nicholls ◽  
Justus Uitermark ◽  
Sander van Haperen
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Undocumented Immigrants ◽  
Undocumented Immigrant ◽  
Undocumented Migrants ◽  
Immigrant Rights ◽  
Considerable Success ◽  
American Immigrant ◽  
Immigrant Rights Movement ◽  
The Media ◽  
The U.S

Undocumented immigrant youths, known as the Dreamers, rose to exceptional prominence in the American immigrant rights movement in the 2000s and 2010s. The Dreamers had considerable success in presenting themselves as assimilated and hard-working patriots worthy of regularization. While this strategy worked well in the media and politics, it also created a distance between the Dreamers and less privileged groups of undocumented immigrants. In 2013, just when they were widely recognized as legitimate, the Dreamers made the remarkable move to change their strategy: rather than presenting themselves as model immigrants uniquely worthy of regularization, they began mobilizing for policies benefiting all undocumented migrants. By documenting and explaining this change in strategy, this paper addresses the broader question of what separates and binds privileged and underprivileged subgroups in social movements.

scholarly journals Capitalism and the Immigrant Rights Movement in the United States

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcel Paret ◽  
Sofya Aptekar ◽  
Shannon Gleeson
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Movements ◽  
The United States ◽  
Global Capitalism ◽  
Recent History ◽  
Immigrant Rights ◽  
History Of ◽  
Immigrant Rights Movement

Social movements are full of contradictions, and an inherent tension often emerges between reformist and radical flanks. This becomes especially true as activists attempt to draw connections between varied aims such as opposition to globalization and support for immigrants. During the 1999 Battle of Seattle, the movement focused on opposing neoliberalism (Graeber 2002) and advocating for alternative visions of globalization (Reitan 2012). Some activists also noted the hypocrisy of opening borders to capital while militarizing the borders for migrants. Yet, in the end, immigrant rights movements and their central issues did not feature prominently in Seattle or later anti-globalization efforts. Simultaneously, however, most immigrant rights advocates have not prioritized opposition to the destructive power of global capitalism. In this paper, we consider the implication of this critical omission and trace the recent history of the immigrant rights movement and its articulations with anti-capitalism.

Conclusion

2020 ◽  
pp. 133-144
Author(s):  
Kevin Escudero
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
Coalition Building ◽  
Undocumented Immigrant ◽  
Immigrant Rights ◽  
Marginalized Groups ◽  
Refugee Community ◽  
Immigrant Rights Movement ◽  
Immigrant And Refugee

This book concludes with an analysis of how the Identity Mobilization Model and its illustration of movement activists’ efforts to leverage the use of an intersectional movement identity continue to resonate with organizers in the immigrant rights movement and broader social movement contexts as well. In particular, the conclusion points to the immigrant rights movement’s growing emphasis on black undocumented immigrant and transgender undocumented immigrant activist identities as well as the potential for coalition building and allyship with the Muslim immigrant and refugee community. By examining the continued manifestations of an intersectional movement identity in the immigrant rights movement and beyond, the conclusion underscores the importance of such a framework for understanding the movement’s future and its promise to bring about meaningful, transformative social change for immigrants and other members of marginalized groups.

The Identity Mobilization Model

2020 ◽  
pp. 19-48
Author(s):  
Kevin Escudero
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
San Francisco ◽  
York City ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Community Members ◽  
Immigrant Rights ◽  
Ethnographic Approach ◽  
Immigrant Rights Movement ◽  
Formal Recognition

This chapter provides an overview of the book’s organizing theoretical framework, the Identity Mobilization Model, includes an overview of the sites where fieldwork for the book was conducted, and details the histories of the three subgroups whose experiences are the main focus of the book. The Identity Mobilization Model combines social movement research on education, strategy, and allyship to explain how members of a marginalized group who do not hold formal recognition under the law contest this form of exclusion and fight for increased rights. The discussion of the book’s multisited ethnographic approach, which is based on fieldwork conducted in San Francisco, Chicago, and New York City, highlights the similarity of each city with regard to the welcoming environment it provides for undocumented community members. The chapter concludes with a detailed background of the three subgroups within the immigrant rights movement that the book’s ethnographic chapters focus on: Asian undocumented immigrants, undocuqueer immigrants, and formerly undocumented women.

Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Kevin Escudero
Keyword(s):  
Social Movement ◽  
Methodological Approach ◽  
Immigrant Youth ◽  
Coalition Building ◽  
Undocumented Immigrant ◽  
Undocumented Immigration ◽  
Immigrant Rights ◽  
Scholarly Literature ◽  
Road Map ◽  
Immigrant Rights Movement

The introduction provides an overview of the immigrant rights movement and the emergence of a prominent contingent of undocumented immigrant youth at its forefront. These youth have strategically and purposefully leveraged the use of an intersectional movement identity to in turn facilitate coalition building with members of similarly situated groups. The introduction lays out the book’s theoretical intervention in the scholarly literature on undocumented immigration and social movement activism and its methodological approach. It also includes a road map of the later ethnographic and interview-based chapters.

Latinas in U.S. Social Movements

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary Pardo
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
Cultural Values ◽  
Women Of Color ◽  
The United States ◽  
Labor Rights ◽  
Immigrant Rights ◽  
Movement Strategies ◽  
And Gender

Latinas, members of the largest ethnic/racial group in the United States, often have been omitted from social movement accounts or dismissed as politically passive, hindered by traditional cultural values. Like other women of color, Latinas have faced sexism and racism and class bias in social science accounts and social movements (civil rights, labor rights, and women’s rights). This chapter begins by problematizing the pan-ethnic label “Latina,” drawing from conceptual frameworks, including Anzaldúa’s “borderlands,” Crenshaw’s “intersectionality,” social movement theories of identity, and decolonial feminist theory. It provides a brief historical overview of Latinas in U.S. social movements to illustrate the significance of conquest and colonization as the critical context for generating Latina activism. The chapter concludes with a closer look at two social movements, environmental rights and immigrant rights, where Latinas were prominent participants who utilized ethnic, class, and gender identities as movement strategies to make claims and to mobilize constituents.

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